2015 Goals and Recap

I know this post is coming out over a year late…….but luckily I hand wrote out my goals at the end of 2014 and can still recap on the year.

401K

At the beginning of 2016 my wife and I were each contributing 6% every paycheck which was enough to get the full company match of 1.5% (.25% for every 1 % the employee puts in). At the end of 2014, we agreed to each increase it by 1% every quarter putting us at 10% of our total salary.

End 2015: My wife is putting 10% but I am only at 8%. Technically this is a fail, but still a pretty good improvement. I make more $ than my wife so we feel the % increase more on my salary – still plan to get up to 10% on mine (if not more in 2016) but will save the details for a 2016 goals post.

$12,000 Emergency Fund by end of 2017

When I wrote these goals originally, I gave us 3 years to build an emergency fund, meaning we would need to save 4K a year to hit our goal. At the end of 2015 the Emergency Fund is just above 7K, so we are well ahead of schedule on this. We put $125 every paycheck into this fund and will hit our original goal at some point next year. Our living situation has changed drastically since these goals were set out so we need to make some adjustments.

Roth IRA

Contribute $5,000 a year combined to our Roth IRAs by the end of 2016

At the end of 2014 we were contributing $120 a paycheck which would be $3,120 a year. At the end of 2015 we are putting $150 a paycheck ($75 to each) or $3,900 a year. We are on pace to hit our goal by the end of 2016, need to increase our contribution by about $50 to hit the goal. We usually make extra contributions at least once a year when stock is sold from our ESPP plan.

As of writing this, I have made 1 payment in 2015, and at my current rate/balance/payment my loans will be paid off in 3.6 years. On track for my original goal, but this will need to be adjusted for 2016 since my interest rates are so much lower I want to drop that timeframe further.

Credit Card

This was a pretty easy target, but still worth noting – do not carry a credit card balance in 2015. We spent over 20K on our credit card (We use it to pay for everything possible down to cell phone and cable bills) and didn’t pay a penny of interest in 2015. We also bought two round trip tickets to Arizona with our points and still have half left. Nice to be paid for using a credit card responsibly.

Other notables for 2015:

Sold our first house – made a nice profit for only living there for 2 years!

Built a brand new house – Used our profit as our downpayment!

Continued putting $50 a paycheck into a brokerage account (Home Run/Trading account)

I will take some time over the next few days to write out our 2016 goals and try to break them down year by year instead of multi-year goals so it is easier to understand.

Take Action: Do you write out yearly financial goals and recap on the previous year? If not, you should start thinking about what you want to accomplish, it is really interesting to look back and see how you fared. If you do track yearly financial goals – how did you do? Does anyone set goals that are not outlined above (Net worth comes to mind)?

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